Wednesday, June 4

10 posts in this topic

Just how the Ballet School came to be a beneficiary amid the cuts remains a mystery, but already many in Canberra - including some within the Liberal Party - are pointing out that it's often not what you know, but who you know.

On the board of the Australian Ballet School is Daniele Kemp, the high-profile wife of former Liberal arts minister Rod Kemp, a predecessor of George Brandis as arts minister. Mr Kemp is now the chairman of the Institute of Public Affairs, a right-wing lobby group.

The chairman of the Australian Ballet School says the decision to purchase a $4.7 million Melbourne mansion, part-funded by $1 million in the Federal Budget, was part of the institution's "duty of care" to its students.

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C: You are the tallest professional ballet dancer. Do you think that your height gives you an advantage or is it more of a disadvantage when it comes to dancing, like turns and jumps?

FABRICE CALMELS: You know, it was a disadvantage for the longest time. There’s always a disadvantage in ballet, people are very different. You have to figure out how to utilize your body. However for me, being so tall, a lot of the time people didn’t know what to do with me. Prior to Joffrey Ballet, I was with the Paris Opera. I did all my studies with them, in boarding school, and after I started growing, they didn’t know what to do with me. They were shocked. The Paris Opera, it’s a large institution, I don’t know exactly how many dancers are in the company, but let’s say over a hundred dancers. They are perfection people, that fit and they fit and assemble, all the same height, everybody is the same body type, and I was a giant! When I came to the U.S., it was kind of the same thing, nobody ever saw a dancer that tall. At a lot of auditions, plus I was very young, people didn’t know what to do with me. Really not until I joined the Joffrey Ballet. So, for the longest time it was really a disadvantage because I couldn’t show what I was doing and who I really was as a performer because all they would see is that height. And it was for them a wall, a giant wall and a barrier they couldn’t pass. So, it was a disadvantage at first.

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Q: You quote one Bible verse in your book: 2 Samuel 6:14: "David was dancing before the Lord with all his might." Why do you like it so much?

A: They don't talk about dancing so much in the Bible, and being a dancer, and loving it so much, I love the image of dancing before the Lord with joy and not caring what anybody thought. David is not dancing before the Lord perfectly. David is not a trained dancer. It sunk into me: I don't need to dance perfectly.

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But ballet fans aren’t alone in being excited at this prospect. As Marquez told this writer in a recent interview, “Teddy (Kumakawa) is a very musical dancer and a musical choreographer, too. The way he uses music is just amazing, with a lot of movements synchronized to the music.

“And he is a passionate Romeo. From the first time, we had good chemistry in the rehearsal!”

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No, what with Kylian’s skin and Zuska’s underpants and Balanchine’s pop-up legs, you could say we saw just about all these dancers had to offer.

I didn’t find an entire evening’s worth of overstatement especially satisfying. This program was a fair expression of the popular state of play in ballet, but a work of subtlety would have been a wise choice to leaven the mix. And though the dancers were in splendid form, none of them stood out as particularly special. That is the consequence of works that objectify the body, emphasizing distorted shapes and fragmentation over individual interpretation.

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Instead of a beautiful and passionate heroine overcome with emotions of true love and its loss, Smirnova’s Nikiya was guarded and a lonely soul. In her first display of real passion during her duet with Solor, danced by another guest artist, Vadim Muntagirov, you believed her love, but you also realized she wasn’t going to show it by draping her arms all over her beloved. In most of the first act she held her head high and her gaze icy and distant, concealing her loneliness with a dignified stance. But despite all of her projected strength, you felt sorry for this young girl who seemed all alone in the world she inhabited until she met Solor.

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The dancing is closely linked to the story-line, but it is lovely in and of itself. Nakamura’s Giselle was light and rambunctious in the first act, coupling deft balon with delicate footwork. Tisserand’s Albrecht conveyed his nobility through his clean lines and beats, even while he masqueraded as peasant. Everyone in Act I had plenty of batterie—indicative of the folksy setting—and the corps de ballet of vinegatherers and friends performed with gusto and admirable unison. In the Peasant pas de deux, Leta Biasucci and Jonathan Porretta sparkled with exuberant but understated virtuosity. Both of their variations included fiendish brisée volée sections, as though they were holding a competition to see who could get more air; Biasucci and Porretta both know how to fly. Although the Peasant pas is essentially a divertissement, the sweetly romantic duet provided a dramatic foil: they were the happy dancing couple Giselle and Albrecht can never be.

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Maybe it’s germane that Daphnis et Chloé was an early Ballet Russes work, although Millepied has entirely redone the choreography. He’s kept Ravel’s gorgeous, hypnotic score, which has the layered, impressionist sound of orchestral improvisation. (Ravel never feels old.) The stage is stark, bold coloured shapes descend from the sky, the diffuse light looks like Aegean sunshine, and the dancers, in ethereal white dresses, move with a fluid but exacting grace. When Daphnis and Chloé are reunited after prolonged separation, they pause in the midst of a tussling pas de deux. Chloé bends towards the ground in a deep, relinquishing backbend, as though she is giving more of herself to her lover with every triggered vertebrae. When there is nothing left to give, her body hangs like the curve of the moon.